Thursday, April 20, 2017

D-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) is the most potent hallucinogic substance known to man. Compared to other hallucinogic substances, LSD is 100 times more potent than psilocybin and psilocin and 4,000 times more potent than mescaline. LSD was discovered accidentally in 1943 by Swish chemist Albert Hofmann, having sinthetized it in the Sandoz laboratories in Basel. He swallowed 250 micrograms of LSD. In America Timothy Leary and Richard Alper wrote together the book "The Psychedelic Experience" (1964), Leary founded the IFIF (International Federation for International Freedom), but LSD would be illegal in California in 1966 and possession of LSD would be banned federally in the U.S. after the passage of the Staggers-Dodd Bill (Public Law 90-639). The psychiatric medician Oscar Janiger was other important pioneer of the collective difusion of LSD, although Leary was the most famous acid guru. Janiger had administered over three thousand LSD doses between 1954-1962 to volunteers and Hollywood personalities as Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson, Rita Moreno, André Previn, etc. In 1962, Janiger was investigated by the FBI and forced to abandon his supply. Aldous Huxley, Janiger's friend, was initiated with peyote in 1930 by Alesteir Crowley. Psychiatrist Humphry Osmond had introduced Huxley to mescalina in 1953.

Huxley's psychedelic incursions were reflected upon his philosophical essays as "The Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell." In 1963, sick with throat cancer in his deathbed, Huxley begged to be inyected LSD for pain relief. The CIA had created a hidden proyect called MKULTRA, financed through the Menlo Park militar hospital. Standford University's students and random bohemian beatniks offered themselves as guinea pigs for hundred dollars (the volunteers received LSD 25, psilocibine, mescaline, and DMT). Scientists studied their reactions and the military applied these knowledge for secret mentral control operations as described in the film "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962), starred by Frank Sinatra. ―"LSD-Origins" article from Route 66 magazine #132 (October 1997)

Scientific evidence of a ‘higher’ state of consciousness has been found in a study led by the University of Sussex. Neuroscientists observed a sustained increase in neural signal diversity – a measure of the complexity of brain activity – of people under the influence of psychedelic drugs, compared with when they were in a normal waking state. The diversity of brain signals provides a mathematical index of the level of consciousness. What is the level of consciousness of the psychedelic state? Empirically, measures of neural signal diversity such as entropy and Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity score higher for wakeful rest than for states with lower conscious level like propofol-induced anesthesia. Here we compute these measures for spontaneous magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals from humans during altered states of consciousness induced by three psychedelic substances: psilocybin, ketamine and LSD. For all three, we find reliably higher spontaneous signal diversity, even when controlling for spectral changes. This increase is most pronounced for the single-channel LZ complexity measure, and hence for temporal, as opposed to spatial, signal diversity. These findings suggest that the sustained occurrence of psychedelic phenomenology constitutes an elevated level of consciousness – as measured by neural signal diversity. ―“What a Trip: First Evidence for Higher State of Consciousness Found.” NeuroscienceNews, 19 April 2017: Increased spontaneous MEG signal diversity for psychoactive doses of ketamine, LSD and psilocybin. Source: neurosciencenews.com

I was really tired of trying to make Jim fall in love with me by pretending not to care, as if it were only by coincidence that my acid-induced ramblings had taken me backstage the past eleven months. My slickly incoherent version of a dumb blonde was wearing thin. “You have to be careful with acid,” Jim said: “It shouldn’t be misused. You should just take it at the right times, when you really mean it.” He sounded so reverent about the whole thing that I wondered if he was making fun of me. But he stayed all holy looking, so I started feeling guilty about all the wrong times I’d taken acid. My mind ranted in noisy desperation until I thought: He’s the man; he should do something. Jim drank his beer and contemplated the dusty curtains. He put down his beer, walked over to me, and lightly placed his hands on my shoulders. Looking into my face, his eyes invited me to stand; his hands, moving to my waist, commanded it. His arms tightening around me, Jim pulled me closer, lifting me in a kind of unrushed passion. Standing above me, his eyes holding mine intently, he slid the infamous black leather pants slowly down his pale, smooth skin. He moved softly down beside me. I lay there, mute and amazed. Playful, he indulged in a tug-of-war game with my clothes. His mood changed fluidly until he was moving slowly inside me, a sensual scientist searching and finding the right slants and curves. Keeping a quality of unhurried passion, he was lovely, mastering each sensation. Touching him was like meeting who he really was, and I liked him more. He was a good kisser, slow and dreamy and fierce all at once.

When he took his defenses away like that, it blew me away. All I wanted to do was reassure him, love him; he was a stray child with no mother, lost in the world. We felt raw and tender in the moment and held each other with all the love we’d never found. It seemed the warmth and strength of those who will forever be friends. ”If it wasn’t for this, life wouldn’t be worthwhile,” Jim said, his voice near tears. The desolation in his words scared me, but then he transformed like a desert storm. He wanted to make love and threw off his clothes as his desperation mounted. “You know, you’ve always been good to me, in bed,” Jim said. “I want to keep seeing you. But it can’t be all the time, you know. I can’t go with you or anything. I’m not dependable; It would just be a few nights together every few weeks or so. Could you do that? I mean, could you handle it that way? I don’t want you to get hurt.” “Are they really that different? All the women?” I asked: “It seems like it’d get boring.” “Yeah. They’re all pretty much the same. I don’t know why I do it,” he sighed, his voice full of heavy dejection. Bill Siddons (The Doors manager) had warned me: “I just don’t think Jim can really relate to women. Except Pam, I guess. I don’t really know what their gig is. I don’t understand what he sees in her. She’s always crying. But she helped him a lot in the old days when he was getting started.”

“You know, I think we’re all slaves to our bodies!” Jim pronounced, glancing around tensely. As we drove through Beverly Hills, Jim threw his head out the window and waved to a small blonde child. “Hello, little girl!” he yelled exuberantly. She stared back, refusing to acknowledge his greeting. “Snotty kid,” he muttered. I pulled my floppy felt Greta Garbo hat off and on. “I wonder where we’ll be ten years from now?” he asked. “I don’t really want to know,” I said, throwing my hat in the backseat. “Oh, you’ll probably be married and painting on the side.” He spoke as if I had an easy, reassuring fate. I glared: “You’ll probably be married, too.” “Yeah, I probably will be,” Jim sighed in resignation. I wondered whom he thought he’d marry. “You know,” Jim continued, “what I need is a woman who would just laugh at me. One who wouldn’t take me seriously… I mean, the things I do—the stupid things—she would just laugh.” I blurted out my LSD arrest story, emphasizing how I’d felt the blue veins on my wrist were life itself. Getting more physical, he went down on me. “I love your pussy,” he said: “You’re so beautiful!” I was really tired of that one; beauty was a shell. Turning from the window, he looked into my eyes: “Would you marry me?” “Yes,” I said. Knowing he was a person someone would marry seemed to cheer him up. Jim pulled me down next to him, rocking me back and forth in a slow, reassuring motion. “I love you,” he said, burying his head between my breasts.

Another summer passed. In early October 1970, Jim’s voice on the end of the line sounded broken and thick. “I just got back from Miami,” he said. “Won’t you come and see me?” I didn’t know many details about his trial in Miami. “Where are you?” I asked, unable to think clearly. “Uh, it’s the Gene Autry Hotel. You know, the big one near the corner of Sunset…” I knew he wanted dreams, gentle lies; he wanted to forget. He brought over the bag of coke, and we snorted some. The wonders of cocaine soothed us both. We walked outside on the balcony, wordless and serene. Leaning out over the railing, we were naked, feeling pure and innocent. Ashes fell from the sky, enveloping all the people in smoke and smog. Crying silently, I turned to Jim. He held me back, a glass figurine, a fragile figment of imagination. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. But he didn’t believe I loved him. I had to get the hell away, leave behind the years I’d lost dreaming about him. Decisively, I reached for my purse, smoothed down my clothes and hair. The part of him that wounded others was the weakness that destroyed him even more. His own pain made him blind to how he affected others. Self-obsession drove him—he couldn’t drive himself. It was as if he held a sharp blade turned inward as he pushed out against the world. That only pushed the knife farther in, embedding in his heart as he struck out, each time drawing more blood. –"Love Him Madly: An Intimate Memoir of Jim Morrison" (2013) by Judy Huddleston